High-Performance Computing For Support Vector Machines

S. Tavara

University of Skövde, Feb 2019. (Licentiate Thesis).

Machine learning algorithms are very successful in solving classification and regression problems, however the immense amount of data created by digitalization slows down the training and predicting processes, if solvable at all. High-Performance Computing (HPC) and particularly parallel computing are promising tools for improving the per- formance of machine learning algorithms in terms of time. Support Vector Machines (SVM) is one of the most popular supervised machine learning techniques that enjoy the advancement of HPC to overcome the problems regarding big data, however, effi- cient parallel implementations of SVM is a complex endeavour. While there are many parallel techniques to facilitate the performance of SVM, there is no clear roadmap for every application scenario.
This thesis is based on a collection of publications. It addresses the problems regard- ing parallel implementations of SVM through four research questions, all of which are answered through three research articles. In the first research question, the thesis inves- tigates important factors such as parallel algorithms, HPC tools, and heuristics on the efficiency of parallel SVM implementation. This leads to identifying the state of the art parallel implementations of SVMs, their pros and cons, and suggests possible avenues for future research. It is up to the user to create a balance between the computation time and the classification accuracy. In the second research question, the thesis explores the impact of changes in problem size, and the value of corresponding SVM parameters that lead to significant performance. This leads to addressing the impact of the problem size on the optimal choice of important parameters. Besides, the thesis shows the existence of a threshold between the number of cores and the training time. In the third research question, the thesis investigates the impact of the network topology on the performance of a network-based SVM. This leads to three key contributions. The first contribution is to show how much the expansion property of the network impact the convergence. The next is to show which network topology is preferable to efficiently use the computing powers. Third is to supply an implementation making the theoretical advances practi- cally available. The results show that graphs with large spectral gaps and higher degrees exhibit accelerated convergence. In the last research question, the thesis combines all contributions in the articles and offers recommendations towards implementing an ef- ficient framework for SVMs regarding large-scale problems.